The present invention relates to a cooking apparatus with a glass/glass-ceramic panel, which has at least one cooking area and a gas burner, which produces an open flame. The cooking apparatus has a concentric mechanically fixed cooking vessel support concentric to the gas burner that has feet and a resting or bearing surface on which a cooking vessel is supported or rests.
Cooking arrangements including glass-ceramic panels providing cooking surfaces and cooking areas, which are heated electrically, have been known for more than two decades. These glass-ceramic cooking areas are valued primarily because of their pleasing appearance, their plane surfaces and easy cleaning. Because of the definite and valued advantages that glass-ceramic materials provided as cooking surface materials, these materials have now been used for several years in gas cooking units or cooking units with electrically heated cooking zones in combination with gas burners, the so-called mixed units.
Two types of gas cooking units have been built. In a first type a gas burner is provided which is arranged under the cooking area of a closed glass-ceramic panel. This sort of gas cooking unit is, for example, described in DE 43 26 945 C2.
In a second type of cooking unit of this kind conventional atmospheric gas burners, i.e. those with an open flame, are inserted through respective openings in the glass-ceramic panel.
For example, a cooking unit with a gas burner of this latter type with an open flame, as it is described in DE 195 05 469 C1, forms the starting point for the present invention, i.e. the present invention is an improved cooking unit of this type.
The previously described cooking apparatus with a glass/glass-ceramic panel, which has at least one cooking area with a gas burner with an open flame, requires a vessel support. This vessel support has a standing or resting surface for a cooking vessel with feet attached to it and is placed on the glass/glass-ceramic panel. This cooking vessel support must be arranged so that it is concentric to the gas burner and fixed in position, so that the energy transfer from the burner to the cooking vessel is optimum.
The attachment and centering of the vessel support in known cooking units with glass-ceramic cooking surfaces and gas burners integrated in them occurs by means of the cover for the atmospheric gas burner. Alternatively it occurs by means of impressions in an adapter plate between the gas burner and the glass-ceramic panel.
It is also known to center the vessel support by impressions in the cooking surface frame in a currently marketed product. The impressions must be formed so that the cooking vessel support is definitely centered in its resting position.
The disadvantage of the currently marketed embodiments of the device for fixing the cooking vessel support in position involves the expensive form for the gas burner, in cases in which it is used as the centering means. In cases in which an adapter plate is used or with a cooking area frame having a complicated form, these components are disadvantageously expensive and prevent a flexible interchangeable parts system for part replacement from being developed. Furthermore parts with impressions are difficult to clean.